So you’re getting into Social Media for both business and personal use. You’ve heard the hype about how you can not only build your brand using services such as Facebook and Twitter, actually sell products and now you’re ready to get started. But wait there are a few things you need to realize before you start spamming the social media services. These are the Six Rules of Social Media and are rules to live by.

• First rule of Social Media… DON’T SPAM THE SYSTEMS – people hate this and it won’t help your cause. If anything it will not get you any business and will hurt your brand
• Second rule of Social Media… Remember it’s all about the relationship – most people forget this, if you build a quality feed or a quality profile where good information is shared then people will come. I know I sound like Google’s Matt Cutts when I say this, but it’s true, CONTENT IS KING.
• Third rule of Social Media… Remember to listen as much if not more than your broadcast. Unlike traditional media, Social Media is about the conversation and in any good conversation there needs to be listening and participating.
• Fourth rule of Social Media… Respond to naysayers and people who are unhappy with you or your brand. Following how you message is perceived in the Social Media space is crucial. Responding quickly and appropriately will look good for your company’s brand as well as turn someone who is unhappy into a loyal customer.
• Fifth rule of Social Media… have fun with it. Yes Social Media is a great way to get the message out about your product and brand. But remember to actually enjoy communicating with people. If you don’t people will sense that you’re all business and will be turned off
• Finally, the Sixth rule of Social Media… DON’T SELL. I know it’s hard not to push your latest product out there for the world to see, but I’m not telling you not to do that. What I’m telling you to avoid is the overly used car salesman approach of berating people to try your new product. Introduce your product on a one-on-one basis with people, bring it up in conversation and try and make it seem natural.

If you follow these six simple rules of social media you’re on your way to getting the full benefits out of social media. You will not only generate conversations and be active in the online communities, but you will even grow your business and your brand.

Image: Flickr – BonkedProducer

This is the Link Report for August 12th through August 13th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• Facebook Grew Twice As Fast As Twitter In July – Facebook not only bought Friendfeed this month they grew twice as fast as twitter in July. Making them the clear dominant market leader.
• YouTube Launches Its Redesign – Now that redesign is going live for all users. If you take a look at YouTube (YouTube).com, you will see the new interface for yourself. YouTube has also blogged about the redesign, explaining some of the new features and a few that were removed. Here’s the text and a screenshot:
• The Internet Marketing Driver: Your Google Local Business Center Dashboard, Analyzing and Refining Your Google Maps Listing Based on Analytics – Another great post by SEO Guru Glenn Gabe about local search and local business center in Google
• Official Google Reader Blog: A flurry of features for feed readers – Google Does it again
• Google Caffeine FAQ: Your Questions Answered – PC World – Q&A about the Google update
• Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors’ blog: Caffeine Injection Gives Google Search a Boost – For instance, Caffeine is undoubtedly faster than the current Google Search, often coming back with results in about half the time. It also appears to crawl many more pages–sometimes twice as many for a particular keyword. And according to some pundits, Caffeine's results suggest that it also uses a more complex combination of keywords to rank pages.
• Facebook Goes Lite and Tests Twitter-Like Version of Itself – Let the gloves come off. Facebook bought FriendFeed the other day and not they are going straight for their competition, namely Twitter. Will it work?
• Twitter Not Suing Developer, But Spam Apps Should Watch Out – Developer of app MyTwitterButler an auto following Twitter app claimed that he was being sued by Twitter. Twitter denies this.
• Federal judge in Tyler says Microsoft can’t sell Word | TechBlog | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle – What a shock, MIcrosoft infringed on a patent. Judge orders halt to sales of Microsoft Word.
• Pixorial: Bringing Sexy Back to Online Video Editing? – Put together by former executives from Netscape and Oracle, Pixorial has been in private beta since January of this year. Its mission is to “help people do more with video memories than ever before,” and to that end offers an interesting mix of digital and analog video services.

Google opened up its latest search engine update to the world yesterday. Though most of the changes are under the  hood and the basic user interface is the same, some subtle changes are occuring. One of which appears to be the the weight that social media profiles and pages rank in the SERPS.

Patricio Robles over at Econsultancy writes:

As you can see, there aren’t many noticeable changes to the UI. In fact, you probably won’t notice much difference at all. According to Google’s Matt Cutts, “this update is primarily under the hood” and has involved “rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure“.

And yes, that means that there will be some changes in site rankings. From my limited initial tests, the impact on rankings seems subtle — most of the time.

One exception appears to be social web results. For instance, certain high-profile Facebook Pages appear to be receiving a major boost in the rankings with Caffeine. One commenter on the Google Webmaster Central blog also noted “I’ve noticed more Twitter pages in the results with this version of Google“.

I decided to test this for myself. Using the sandbox I did a search for my name. Sure enough at the #2 spot was my twitter page. When I searched for my company’s name (Goldstein Meda) I noticed another change. The map results were farther down the page. And though a few random results popped in my Twitter account for my business still showed up in the results.

Though there are some subtle differences, I have yet to see anything jaw dropping. The higher ranking positions of social media profiles and pages does give more weight to having a presence on some of the more influential social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin  and YouTube.

In my opinion this is only the beginning social media’s impact on online business and SEO.

I’d love to hear what you think of these developments. Post your thoughts in the comments below.

This is a hotly debated topic. Does your employer have the right to tell you what you can do on social media in your free time? One way to look at this is ask yourself how does your actions on social media not only effect you but your company.

Sorry for the bit of a ramble but I’ve figured out a few things that I want to share with all of you. Auto Following has its merits but it also has its problems. My suggestion is to not do it. But this is not to say don’t follow people who follow you. You should and you should build relationships. This also segways into my response to Wil Reynolds post on the Seer Interactive blog about vetting your social media expert. I love Wil and think he’s awesome at what he does and he’s by far one the coolest guys I know. But I disagree with some points in his article. While you’re listening to my ramble find me on twitter @sethgoldstein.

Before you get started in social media to promote your company, you need to have a plan in place. Not only do you need to plan you need to know how to execute the plan and the tactic.

WebPro News has a great video of Chris Brogan, the social media guru behind New Marketing Labs and ChrisBrogan.com. In the video (below), Chris discusses what he sees as the future of Social Media. Definitely worth a watch.

More WebProNews Videos

Where do you think Social Media is headed? Post your thoughts below in the comments.

Google’s Matt Cutts explains on the latest Webmaster Help Video that Yahoo, Best of the Web, other Web directories with an editorial process are not considered paid links. This is because they have guidelines that need to be met and will reject low quality submissions if they don’t meet the right criteria.

This is very helpful and makes sense because both BOTW and Yahoo Directory are actually useful to users as well as Google and the search engines. One thing that always gets me is how Cutts says that you don’t have to worry about going overboard on SEO to rank high, just provide great content. This in some ways is true. Great content should out-weigh Optimized sites, but in actuality it doesn’t always happen that way. I know Cutts really can’t say otherwise, but it just gets a little annoying that he keeps saying make great content and everything else will fall in place, when he knows full well that often that isn’t the case.

Here’s the video. I’d love to hear what you think of this and what you think about Yahoo Directory and Best of the Web.

Social Media isn’t about broadcasting ideas and screaming out your information at the public. It’s about the conversation – about the relationship building.

Check this viral video out. It’s unbelievable.